


Out of Reach

by Fictropes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dan and his moustache....., Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29381085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictropes/pseuds/Fictropes
Summary: Three weeks shouldn’t be a long time,  probably isn’t to anyone else.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 112





	Out of Reach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ahappyphil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahappyphil/gifts).



> for keeelinnnnn who gave me the prompty ;3 and whom i lub <3

Dan’s nervous but he doesn’t know why.

This is just Phil, the same Phil he’s known for eleven years. They’ve built an entire life together, shit parts included. They’ve argued over open cupboards, argued over who should do the taxes—until they had enough money to hire someone to do it for them. They’ve slept in separate rooms whilst at other peoples house, bumped into each other in the hallway at three am because they both missed each other too much. 

Three weeks shouldn’t be a long time,probably isn’t to anyone else. But to Dan it feels like a lifetime. He’s somehow convinced himself on the taxi ride from the airport to their apartment that Phil is going to be different. Or rather Phil is going to see him differently. 

Dan can’t explain why, and if you asked him all he’d be able to offer is the amount of time they’d spent apart prior to this. He thinks three weeks probably equates to three years in their world. And it’s not that he hugely doubts them, not like Phil hasn’t spent three weeks texting him, calling him at night to whisper soft I miss you’s. It’s just Dan is very good at getting in his own head about things, even now he can easily tell himself he doesn’t deserve good things. And Phil is good, Phil is so fucking good.

He slips his shaking hands beneath his thighs, thinks about the fact they’re currently building a home from the ground up. How they have appointments next week to work out what tiles they want in the kitchen. It’s not going to take three weeks to change Phil’s mind, and Dan needs to stop letting himself have thoughts that allude to Phil being so—little. Thinking so little. Being the opposite to what Dan knows him to be. 

He calms down when his phone dings with a picture of a dog, pleading eyes emoji the only _words_ attached. Phil isn’t going to leave him, Phil wants to spend forever with him. Dan shoots of a quick _maybe_ in response, laughs when he gets the weird devil emoji in response. 

“Here, mate.” 

Dan looks to his left and, yeah, he’s home. Home is where the Phil is. An entire world tour and he never once felt homesick, but France with his family had left him feeling nauseous. He’s just so used to Phil stood by his side, to being able to turn his head and see his grounding point in the room. It should be scary that no one else does that for him, that he’s put all that trust into one other human but—it’s Phil.

It’s Phil. 

He pays the driver and lugs his suitcase out of the boot, half filled with shit he’d picked up for Phil. Dan moans about souvenirs and how much is too much, but buying things for Phil doesn’t count. There’s supposed to be some sort of limit on Christmas and birthdays, but they both always go over. They share one thing with the internet, and everything else is just for their eyes. 

Phil’s gotten home before him, that much is obvious by the shoes kicked off in the middle of the hallway. It’s a tripping hazard Dan’s grown used to over the years. He gently nudges them over to the wall, lines them up with his own trainers. It’s the stupid little things that make Dan content in what they are. Their shoes together in a hallway, their coats hung up side by side, the photo tucked into the corner of the mirror. 

He can hear Phil pottering about in the kitchen, the clanging of pans and the opening of a fridge. Dan thinks he’s about to get a welcome home lunch of something that shouldn't really be allowed to be classed at lunch. Phil’s got a thing for dessert being every meal, and today Dan is going to allow it.

The apartment looks the same, and Dan feels the same. Apart from he feels fucking desperate all of a sudden. To see Phil, to make sure he hasn’t grown an extra head in the time they’ve been apart. Three weeks isn’t long, but it _is._

Despite Dan’s desperation Phil is the one to appear first. To stand at the end of the hall holding a spatula, all this happiness on his face. Dan was an idiot to even doubt him for a second. 

“Hi… Sam?” 

“Oh, fuck off.” 

“C’mere.” Phil’s steps closer, all gentle fingers on Dan’s shoulder, drawing him in. And Dan goes, because Dan will always go. He feels like he can breathe again, lets out all this build up of everything into Phil’s shoulder. All the weirdness of the last three weeks, all the awkward conversation with his family, all the fucking longing. 

Because he has longed for him, as stupid as it sounds. Eleven years of barely being apart does that to a person. The moment it didn’t have to be long distance it stopped being so. The minute they realised they could afford to live together Dan was packed up and inside a Manchester apartment. 

“Do you like the moustache?” Dan asks, clinging on so tight he’s probably going to leave behind a mark of two—idents in the shape of his fingernails on Phil’s back. 

“I really don’t.” Phil says, but he’s still holding on anyway. “Can I shave you?”

“Dunno, depends on whether or not you find it sexual.” 

“Again, I really don’t.” Phil laughs, then he’s biting. Because this is Phil. Because Phil is exactly the same as he had been when they said goodbye to each other in this very hallway three weeks ago. “Missed you, is that stupid?”

“No, no. Not stupid, missed you too.” Dan answers easily, breaking the contact for a second just to instigate more of it. To kiss Phil until he feels fucking dizzy with it. Phil grumbles about the facial hair and how it’s itchy against his _face skin,_ so Dan just rubs up against his cheek, against his forehead, against everything possible until Phil slaps at him with a spatula covered in pancake batter. 

“Bad. Evil little boy. I’ve got carpet burn now.” He rubs at his cheek, lips all screwed up in a pout that isn’t quite as angry as he’s trying to be. “Did you get taller?”

“No.” 

“You seem taller.” 

“Maybe your old age is making you shrink.” Dan suggests, dodges the spatula because he’d definitely seen it coming this time. He feels a bit giddy, to be back in Phil’s presence. To have all these words aimed at him, all this attention. It’s like 2009 in a way he can’t even begin to pinpoint. Same energy, but it’s softer. Same inability to control their facial expressions upon seeing each other. Their hallway is suddenly a train station, but this time Dan _knows_ that they’re it for each other. 

“Go back to France, you freak.” 

“Freak?” Dan screams, pushes at Phil until he has no choice back to walk backwards or fall over onto his arse. “Really? Want me to go get on a plane? Find a French lover? Have a baguette shaped baby?”

“Stop suggesting you’d be the one to be pregnant.” Phil stops moving when they crash into the sofa, holds tight onto Dan’s hips so he doesn’t go toppling. “But no, I really don’t want you to leave. I’ve got so many things to tell you.” 

“Are the pancakes on?”

“No, I think the apartment would’ve been on fire by now.” 

“Kay, kitchen then.”

⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂⌂

Phil had gone shopping on the way back, filled their fridge with complete shit because apparently they deserved a night of chocolate and sweets. They agree to put in a proper order later, because sometimes browsing the Sainsbury’s website together can be intimate. 

“Syrup?”

Dan shakes his head, just accepts his plate of dry pancakes. “Had a big breakfast.”

Phil just shrugs, then proceeds to pour enough for five people on his own. And sometimes Dan will berate him for it, because a sugar fuelled Phil is a bit of a nightmare—especially post flight. But today he just smiles, another reassurance in his mind that Phil hasn’t changed, that nothing has changed.

“I don’t even know—like where do I start? I’ve been taking notes of things I wanna tell you that were like too much to put into a text.” Phil’s phone is in his hands, and he scrolls for a worryingly long amount of time. Dan thinks he’s about to hear a seven hour long story, every detail of Phil’s three weeks without him. 

“Start from the beginning.” Dan suggests. “Or we can start later, once you’ve raided my suitcase.”

“Ooooo.” Phil smiles. “Presents?”

“Yeah, presents.”

And nothing has changed, and _they’re_ still the same. Phil still complains he feels sick once he’s finished his pancakes, still loads the dishwasher a bit dodgy afterwards, still kisses Dan as he passes by to try and distract him from said dodgy loading. And Dan still falls for it, still lets it all happen. 

“Go get my case then.” 

It’s unreal how much you can miss a person, Dan had built it up in his head but Phil stood in front of him is a different thing entirely. He wants to follow him around, to touch, to climb inside his brain and find out all his thoughts. But he settles for sitting on the sofa with him, legs tangled, whilst Phil tells him all about the last few weeks. 

“Three weeks is too long. I think I’ve just decided to fully accept i’m co-dependant, gonna wear it like a badge of honour. Like being co-dependant for you.” Phil’s been stroking his hand up and down Dan’s leg for twenty minutes now, fallen straight back into touches that don’t mean anything but exist because they can't help it. Because they're the human equivalent of a set of magnets, and that's why it made sense for Dan to feel such a pull. To spend three weeks constantly leaning in a direction that made him closer to home. 

Dan had missed it. Gotten used to it. The feeling of a hand on the small of his back, of sitting down and suddenly having fingers running through his hair. 

“You wanna kiss me so bad.” 

“Obviously.” Phil laughs. “I think I’ve missed out on like three thousand kisses. One night I kissed my own hand but it wasn’t the same.” 

“Show me.” Dan prompts, laughs when Phil actually does. Slobbers all over his own screwed up fist. “Stop showing me.”

“Is that how I kiss you?”

“Do you spit in my mouth?”

“Sometimes.” Phil shrugs, wiping the drool off his hand on Dan’s jeans. “But that’s mainly planned and on purpose.”

“Thanks.” Dan snorts. “Wanna go fuck?”

“We’ve only just met!” Phil gasps, scandalised in a way that suggest Phil could be a good actor—if he tried.

“Didn’t stop us in 2009.”

“Did you buy some special French condoms?” Phil asks, eyes straying towards the case he never actually ended up opening. That means he properly missed Dan, because presents are usually his top priority. 

“What would they be exactly?” Dan asks, because he’s dying to know

“I dunno. Baguette on them?”

“You wanna—shove a baguette in my hole?”

“No.” Phil says. “Maybe. But only my penis as a baguette.” 

“Phil.” 

“Yeah?”

“Shutup.” 

And three weeks is a long time for them, but it’s easy to fall back into that feeling of home. 


End file.
